If you are invited to somebody's home, bring them a small gift as a form of respect. However, most will end up protesting when offered a gift. Reply that it is a little something and offer the gift again and it will generally be accepted, hopefully. It is reasonable to bring a bottle of alcohol if you expect to spend evening in a less formal way.
Male guests are expected to bring flowers. Do not give yellow flowers — in Russia, this color is considered as a sign of cheating in love and separation and especially never used for wedding bouquets. The other superstition is related to number of flowers. This quantity has always to be odd that is 3,5,7 and so on. The even number of flowers is always brought to funerals.
Do not give a baby gift until after the baby is born to a particular family. It is bad luck to do so sooner. Verbal congratulations before a person's birthday is often thought as a bad sign.
Church on the Blood, Yekaterinburg, on the spot where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks, ending the Romanov Dynasty
When arriving someone's house, remove your outdoor shoes. You may be given slippers to wear.
In someone's house , Dress in formal clothes. Dressing well shows respect for your hosts. However, this rule may not work among young people.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Russia
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Russia Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.